h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You could do some sort of 'The Office' riff for a Slough Town match report..... or perhaps not.... will it yeading for a replay? Eat my Goal.....

Now *that* is an idea.

McKay, that's very kind, but are you sure you can get Radio London all the way up there?

I was assuming you'd make Radio5 -- they use local reporters for games like these don't they ?

Sometimes, but you're rarely on more than one network at once - the practicalities of reporting on a match make it difficult to service more than one network, so you tend to be hired by one or the other (what am I saying, hired? I'm working for free to do all this!). Occasionally, if Five Live haven't thought ahead and sent someone to a match they might contact the local station and ask for something to be sent down the line to them.

The Slough game went well in places. The thing is, last time out my Halesowen full-time report was delayed, due to a hiatus in the second half because of son-of-Strachan being carted off with a badly gashed leg - and if you don't get it in before the News at 5, they can't use it. So for the Slough game, particularly as Yeading had made history by getting through to the Third Round, I was desperate to file my piece before 5. The trouble was, I hadn't realised how much I had written. As they've got 13 or 14 games to get round, the longest a full-time report can be for Radio London is 30 seconds, or 40 at the very most. I did 54, so they couldn't use it.

So I was kicking myself for a couple of days, worrying that I'd stuffed the whole thing up. But I was quite pleased with the pre-match, half-time, and goal update stuff that I'd done and friends who'd heard it had been quite complimentary. And then Radio London rang me asking if I wanted to do Barnet v Tamworth on Saturday. Which I will be doing tomorrow.

So four weeks later on, I'm finally going to make it to Underhill! Also, my family have found out that Radio London is streamed online - they usually have to turn it off during the match because of rights issues, but if you're curious you can hear me on air some time between 2.45 and 3 as they go around the grounds. As the smallest game, I'm usually on last.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/localradio.shtml?london